if you say humans have no reason to fly, then please explain the reason birds have for evolving flight and why these would not apply to humans.

Birds had ancestors who already had feathers, the evolution was gradual. Every animal is the same species as its parents, but over many generations changes accumulate so that in the long term every species is intermediate between its ancestors and its descendants. The ancestors of birds were small feathered raptors, early birds had four wings for gliding and the efficiency of flight was improved by reducing to two wings. The evolution of the feather itself has also been worked out, even the colours of some fossil feathers are now known. There is no need to say it was magical or designed.

if you say humans have no reason to fly, then please explain the reason birds have for evolving flight and why these would not apply to humans.

Birds had ancestors who already had feathers, the evolution was gradual. Every animal is the same species as its parents, but over many generations changes accumulate so that in the long term every species is intermediate between its ancestors and its descendants. The ancestors of birds were small feathered raptors, early birds had four wings for gliding and the efficiency of flight was improved by reducing to two wings. The evolution of the feather itself has also been worked out, even the colours of some fossil feathers are now known. There is no need to say it was magical or designed.

You say that early ancestors already had feathers. OK, how come? How did these ancestors get feathers? Why did humans not get feathers?

This is why I found evolution a very hard belief to place your faith into. It sounds much simpler to believe in God. I heard that is called Occam's razor.

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Matthew 10:22 "and you will be hated by all for my name’s sake. But the one who endures to the end will be saved." - Jesus (said 2,000 years ago and still true today.)

Odds are, they weren't gears in the first place. They were pieces of exoskeleton that came together, allowing a planthopper to jump by moving both of its legs at the same time.

Quote from: skeptic54768

What was the reason that these gears needed to start evolving? Was it an environmental change? Random?

They didn't 'start' evolving. They continued evolving. There wasn't really a starting point (except maybe at the beginning of life itself, and chances are that chemical reactions happened in organic matter before it ever became living). What happened with the planthoppers is that they continued the evolutionary process which was ongoing before they ever emerged as a species, and certain planthoppers started developing exoskeleton leg parts that tended to fit together like gears, giving them a mechanical advantage when they jumped. That gave them an evolutionary advantage which made them more likely to reproduce over other planthoppers. That's what evolutionary adaptation is - an organism within a species is born with something that's different from the rest, and it gives them an advantage and makes it easier for them to reproduce over other organisms that don't have that advantage.. Eventually, that particular change spreads through their species' gene pool. It's a continuous, ongoing process, which is why it's silly to talk about something "starting to evolve".

Quote from: skeptic54768

If it was random, does that mean a human could randomly get a mutation to make him grow wings and fly? if you say humans have no reason to fly, then please explain the reason birds have for evolving flight and why these would not apply to humans.

I suppose it's possible, if marginally, for a human to get a mutation which gives him wings, but mutations simply aren't that energetic. It would be far more probable for it to be a series of mutations that happen over a very, very long period of time.

Quote from: skeptic54768

I for one can think how much wings would help in our survival.

A human with wings would have to be far lighter in order to fly, and they would have to be very large wings. There's a reason birds have such thin, hollow bones, and such a large wingspan for their size. The Andean condor, for example, is one of the largest flighted bird species now living. It's four feet in length from head to tail, weighs between 30 and 40 pounds, and has a wingspan of around ten feet.

This is why I found evolution a very hard belief to place your faith into. It sounds much simpler to believe in God. I heard that is called Occam's razor.

That's not what [wiki]Occam's razor[/wiki] is. Occam's razor is that the explanation which makes the fewest assumptions is the most likely to be true. Contrary to popular opinion, it has nothing to do with the simplicity of an explanation. In fact, simpler explanations are more likely to fall afoul of Occam's razor, because their apparent simplicity often masks numerous inherent assumptions. Complicated explanations that don't make assumptions are better than simple ones that do.

That's one of the reasons that religion generally loses ground to science - because science minimizes assumptions when it tries to explain things, and religion generally makes no such effort.

Here we go Skeptic. This is a game that will help you understand some of the most basic concepts.

You see, you get to pick the traits and the game generates random events. If your species is all furry, and the climate changes and gets much hotter, your species will die. On the other hand, if your species has no fur, and no body fat, and the temperature gets cold, then it will die out. If your species has short legs and a short neck, when the food starts growing up high, your species will die out.

Here we go Skeptic. This is a game that will help you understand some of the most basic concepts.

You see, you get to pick the traits and the game generates random events. If your species is all furry, and the climate changes and gets much hotter, your species will die. On the other hand, if your species has no fur, and no body fat, and the temperature gets cold, then it will die out. If your species has short legs and a short neck, when the food starts growing up high, your species will die out.

They didn't 'start' evolving. They continued evolving. There wasn't really a starting point (except maybe at the beginning of life itself, and chances are that chemical reactions happened in organic matter before it ever became living). What happened with the planthoppers is that they continued the evolutionary process which was ongoing before they ever emerged as a species, and certain planthoppers started developing exoskeleton leg parts that tended to fit together like gears, giving them a mechanical advantage when they jumped. That gave them an evolutionary advantage which made them more likely to reproduce over other planthoppers. That's what evolutionary adaptation is - an organism within a species is born with something that's different from the rest, and it gives them an advantage and makes it easier for them to reproduce over other organisms that don't have that advantage.. Eventually, that particular change spreads through their species' gene pool. It's a continuous, ongoing process, which is why it's silly to talk about something "starting to evolve".

I suppose it's possible, if marginally, for a human to get a mutation which gives him wings, but mutations simply aren't that energetic. It would be far more probable for it to be a series of mutations that happen over a very, very long period of time.

A human with wings would have to be far lighter in order to fly, and they would have to be very large wings. There's a reason birds have such thin, hollow bones, and such a large wingspan for their size. The Andean condor, for example, is one of the largest flighted bird species now living. It's four feet in length from head to tail, weighs between 30 and 40 pounds, and has a wingspan of around ten feet.

That's not what [wiki]Occam's razor[/wiki] is. Occam's razor is that the explanation which makes the fewest assumptions is the most likely to be true. Contrary to popular opinion, it has nothing to do with the simplicity of an explanation. In fact, simpler explanations are more likely to fall afoul of Occam's razor, because their apparent simplicity often masks numerous inherent assumptions. Complicated explanations that don't make assumptions are better than simple ones that do.

That's one of the reasons that religion generally loses ground to science - because science minimizes assumptions when it tries to explain things, and religion generally makes no such effort.

OK, fair enough.

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Matthew 10:22 "and you will be hated by all for my name’s sake. But the one who endures to the end will be saved." - Jesus (said 2,000 years ago and still true today.)

Coming to a reasonable conclusion about something is not "taking it on faith". I am not a biologist, nor am I a paleontologist, but I do not have to be one in order to propose a means by which something could have happened. Also, one of the problems with fossils is that most organisms don't last long enough to become fossils to begin with. So it's by nature an incomplete (highly incomplete) record.

Quote from: skeptic54768

But, is that shown by the fossils?

Given that I am not saying that you should accept it just because it's reasonable, I don't see the relevance of continually asking me about the fossils, especially since I'm not in a field that deals with fossils.

Quote from: skeptic54768

Where does the new information come from for the mutations?

From the environment, since mutations are caused by environmental factors.

A few observations about biases in the fossil record that are worth making note of: a) common organisms are more likely to be preserved (fossilized) than rare ones, b) organisms with "hard" parts are more likely to be preserved that organisms with "soft" parts, and c) organisms in areas with fewer geological forces are more likely to be preserved that those in areas with more.

There is more to the study of evolution than the fossil record.

Evolution and speciation are not the same thing.

Evolution and natural selection are not the same thing. They are related (natural selection is one of the ways in which the process we refer to as evolution can occur) but they are not identical or interchangeable.

I strongly suspect that you (skeptic54768) are drawing some very incorrect conclusions about both what the theory says, and what the implications of that are. There is literally nothing in the theory that could lead someone who understands what it says to think that humans could evolve wings because it would help in our survival. Although it would be really, really cool, I'm not denying that.

Evolution speak of heritable traits - mutations that can be passed on to the next generation. Natural selection speaks of "survival of the fittest" - fittest referring to breeding the next generation. It's not talking about who's in the "best shape", it's talking about who reproduced the most surviving offspring to carry on the heritable traits. In your giraffe example, you got it backward - the giraffes with the (originally) abnormally long necks were able to reach higher, gaining access to food that wasn't available to those with (originally ) normal necks. Those with the mutation that led to longer necks outbred the others by having access to more food, that's all that evolution is talking about. It's not magic, it's random in many respects, and it's kind of obvious if you just think about it for a few minutes...

Because not all mutations are beneficial. There are lots of mutations that will kill rather than help, but those don't generally get discussed in relation to evolution, as heritable mutations that kill obviously can't be passed on successfully.

If the best looking, strongest, sexiest guy in the room doesn't make surviving babies, it ends with him. It doesn't matter if he happened to be the "fittest" in the sense of his physical condition, it ONLY matters if he reproduced viable offspring, and that his heritable traits were passed to the next generation - and those traits may not have been ones that made beautiful babies either.

« Last Edit: October 16, 2013, 11:02:12 PM by Jag »

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“Be skeptical. But when you get proof, accept proof.” –Michael Specter

It is simpler to believe in myths than to understand actual reality. That does not make it right. Just lazy.

Skepdude,

Really, really think about what screwtape has said above. I know you'll just try to dismiss his claims, but when you do, you'll know exactly how we feel about your claims. They both really do have equal validity.

It is not new information, mutations are just mistakes when DNA copies itself billions of times. The mistakes are filtered by how useful they are to the creature in its environment.

These same DNA mistakes are the basis of paternity tests, and if you take your DNA back further you find that all other creatures are cousins.

Is human consciousness a mistake? It is just a mistake in DNA copying?

No, The mistakes of DNA copying are filtered by how useful the mistakes are to the creature in its environment. Obviously the evolution of brains to coordinate actions and analyse the environment will increase the chance of survival.

It is not new information, mutations are just mistakes when DNA copies itself billions of times. The mistakes are filtered by how useful they are to the creature in its environment.

These same DNA mistakes are the basis of paternity tests, and if you take your DNA back further you find that all other creatures are cousins.

For instance, the average human has 125(-ish) sections of genetic code that don't appear either in the father or the mother. ie. 125 copying mistakes. Which, considering the massive size of the human genome, is a minuscule error rate. Still, the errors are there and evolution can act on them.

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Science: I'll believe it when I see itFaith: I'll see it when I believe it

What this really all boils down to is the credulous Christian (religious) mind-set of "we just have to know right now!" So, if scientists don't know something (or wherever there are gaps in human knowledge) they just fill it with their deity God thing instead of admitting ignorance until sufficient evidence comes in. And they do this because they have assumed (via hearsay) their bible is 'the Word of God'. It's really no different from what other religions do.

What this really all boils down to is the credulous Christian (religious) mind-set of "we just have to know right now!" So, if scientists don't know something (or wherever there are gaps in human knowledge) they just fill it with their deity God thing instead of admitting ignorance until sufficient evidence comes in. And they do this because they have assumed (via hearsay) their bible is 'the Word of God'. It's really no different from what other religions do.

It is a little worse than that. Believers have to know "something" right now, and it doesn't matter what it is as long as it matches their hoped for/presumed/otherwise invalid reality.

It is ironic. Christians have a commandment that tells them not to lie, but they must lie, to themselves (as well as to each other), for the whole thing to work.

So they think that their best argument (evolution can't be true because I don't like it!) is solid.

One way to tell which POV is true, religion or evolution, is to look at how many variations there are of each. Religions come in thousands of forms, and christianity itself comes in tens of thousands of forms. But while the specifics of evolution occasionally spin off variations (whether or not birds evolved from dinosaurs, for instance), overall the evidence and the research and the conclusions that have been reached are incredibly consistent and in agreement with each other. Especially when matched with other sciences, such as biology and geology and chemistry, which have all made myriad discoveries that match up with evolutionary theory quite nicely.

In other words, if we had 38,000 varieties of evolution the way we have of christianity, we would be in as much trouble with the truth as believers are.

Actual evidence keeps us in line. So we don't need any frickin' commandments telling us not to lie. We're honest in the first place.

What this really all boils down to is the credulous Christian (religious) mind-set of "we just have to know right now!" So, if scientists don't know something (or wherever there are gaps in human knowledge) they just fill it with their deity God thing instead of admitting ignorance until sufficient evidence comes in. And they do this because they have assumed (via hearsay) their bible is 'the Word of God'. It's really no different from what other religions do.

What this really all boils down to is the credulous Christian (religious) mind-set of "we just have to know right now!" So, if scientists don't know something (or wherever there are gaps in human knowledge) they just fill it with their deity God thing instead of admitting ignorance until sufficient evidence comes in. And they do this because they have assumed (via hearsay) their bible is 'the Word of God'. It's really no different from what other religions do.

it is not based on us "having to know right now!" It is based on us understanding that science changes like the weather and God never changes.

This illustrates the actual problem, which is not what you think it is. What is true stays true, it is our understanding that changes. This goes for science as well as for religion. That's why we refer to scientific theories, not scientific facts, and why scientists have to train themselves to be skeptical. Contrast this to religious belief, which demands certainty even though it's based on human understanding, which is never certain, because it's based on what we think we know.

Quote from: skeptic54768

One time, it was a FACT the earth was flat. Now it's a FACT the earth is round.

Notably, the belief the Earth was flat came from people who used Biblical verses to buttress their ignorance. Regardless, the Earth was always round regardless of what people thought.

Quote from: skeptic54768

It used to be spontaneous generation was a FACT. Now, it's not a fact.

Scientists were attempting to figure out why maggots appeared in rotting meat, and spontaneous generation was one theory to explain it that was ultimately discarded when it was shown to be false. Regardless, spontaneous generation never occurred.

Quote from: skeptic54768

It used to be a FACT that diseases were cause by bad air.Now it's a FACT it's germs.

[wiki]Miasma theory[/wiki] far preceded actual scientific methodology. For its time, it was reasonably accurate (since the "bad air" contained, not pollutants, but disease-causing bacteria and viruses, which were too small to see). Regardless, it was always bacteria and viruses that caused diseases.

Quote from: skeptic54768

You can not find truth in something when the truth changes every day. Heck, maybe tomorrow evolution will be false and everyone will say "We got that wrong but trust us on the next theory!"

Would you prefer that scientists continued to insist that theories which have been proved wrong were in fact right? Because that's what you're suggesting - that you want certainty over truth.

Quote from: skeptic54768

FACTS can not be FACTS if they are constantly changing. TRUTH doesn't change. TRUTH is TRUTH.

And notably, scientists don't claim that theories are actually facts. However, religious people regularly and frequently claim that their beliefs are truth, despite the lack of anything to prove or even demonstrate this.

Quote from: skeptic54768

I've even heard that the Big Bang theory might be obsolete soon despite the so called mountains of evidence it had to support it.

And those mountains of evidence will still exist. If the Big Bang theory is superseded, it will be because someone came up with an explanation that better fit the evidence, not because it is suddenly 'wrong'.

Quote from: skeptic54768

If you guys can't agree on what a fact is, you can't expect anyone else to just blindly follow the world of scientists.

And why would we want anyone to "blindly follow the world of scientists" to begin with? Blind certainty is the antithesis of science.

By the way, there was never any "scientific evidence" in favor of the Earth being flat. That belief far predated the development of scientific methodology.

It is based on us understanding that science changes like the weather and God never changes.

Nope. Science does not change much, but when it does, it is an improvement.

God has changed quite a bit. There used to be all kinds of gods running around, two of whom belonged to a pantheon in canaan. Those two gods were named el and yhwh. They lived in the sky, above the celestial ocean, which was held up by a dome called the firmament.

yhwh had a wife named Asherah. Over time, el became elohim, the name the canaanites (hebrews) used for the entire pantheon. Over time, elohim and yhwh were merged and the other gods were omitted. Over time, yhwh stopped doing petty and petulant things, lost his body, lost his throne in the sky, became abstract, and was considered to be the only god.

Most of the original "theories" were not theories arrived at by science. And it was science that made them better. Not divine revelation. As I have said here before, there is a reason why we don't use prophets and holy men to design microchips. When they do, they seldom work.

You can not find truth in something when the truth changes every day. Heck, maybe tomorrow evolution will be false and everyone will say "We got that wrong but trust us on the next theory!"

This shows you don't understand what you are talking about. "Truth" is not the same as "scientific theories". Science is a model. It is like a map. You fail to understand that the map is not the territory.